Four days until ICFP! Alex oniugnip and I are stretching our Scheme muscles, getting ready. It's almost time to find out if I've learned anything. Alex's roommate Martin samarin and his future roommate Mark are doing the contest, too, as a different team. (The trash talking has already begun in earnest.) These guys are all programmers not to be trifled with, and I'm probably about to get my ass handed to me, if not by them, then by the Jesse jes5199/Josh j3h/Kim boojum/Paul stereotype441 juggernaut. Or the Andrew pixelherder juggernaut. Regardless, I think I'll have fun and learn stuff.

Alex and I are taking a two-week tai chi class. So far, I'm terrible! But I'm learning. And I can check "study a martial art" off the lifetime to-do list.

We went down to just-north-of-Miami to hang out with some of Alex's family for the weekend. I went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time -- with his great-great-uncle Sid. We're sitting around in a living room with Alex's older relatives, all of whom are pretty sedentary, and suddenly an 80-year-old man comes bounding into the room wearing a triathlon T-shirt and announces that he's going to the beach and whoever wants to come with had better hurry. So we head off to the beach with him and on the way (as we walk past the gigantic American flag that hangs over downtown Delray Beach, Florida on July 4) he tells us that he goes to a weekly political discussion group and that the topic he suggested for this week was "Is Patriotism A Virtue?" and he's irked that they watered it down to "What Does Patriotism Mean To You?" Then we jumped into the ocean and swam for a while. When it was time to go home, Sid was like "Follow me. We might have to jump a fence", and cut through a hotel courtyard. Hotel employees were asking if we had wristbands, and he summarily ignored them and kept walking and we just followed and nobody gave us a hard time. I think this man is my new standard for how cool I want to be when I'm eighty years old. Also the ocean is really warm, and we saw a tiny crab swim by.

1.) I want to have a librarian contest.2.) Tai Chi is insane. My mom (who studied a real-deal guy for a long ol' while) tried to teach all of the black belts at my tae kwon do school, and we were like, "um, dude, that's way hard. let's go kick some stuff instead." The pay-off is amazing, though.3.) When I was last down by the atlantic ocean, my friend picked up a blow fish. and then, when it blew at her, she dropped it. it was pretty wicked.

The little crab wouldn't let me touch it -- it kept swimming away. How can those things move so much faster than I can?

Yeah, it's hard -- memorization and concentration and balance. They keep talking about what will happen if I continue with the program, and I feel really bad because I'm only here for a couple of weeks and won't be able to. Maybe I can do it in Bloomington. Or maybe I want to do capoeira. (Because, you know, all martial arts are entirely interchangeable and all.)

If you were in Atlanta (and if you didn't mind writing Scheme, our language of choice at the moment), I would probably beg and plead for you to be on our team. After a couple years of working mostly by myself, I've realized that I would rather write code with people who are in the room with me if I can help it. It's hard on my wrists to do otherwise (I'm always either IMing or IRCing or writing code, so I don't ever get a break), and it's just easier for me to work face to face.

The Jesse/Josh/Kim/Paul team might have no such hang-ups, though. You could see what they say.